There’s no doubt that persecution is a stark reality of living the Christian life. The apostle Paul warned us that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). Jesus told us to expect persecution from the world because if they persecuted Him, they will persecute His followers also. Jesus has made it very clear to us that those of the world will hate us because they hate Him. If Christians were like the world—vain, earthly, sensual, and given to pleasure, wealth, and ambition—the world would not oppose us. But Christians do not belong to the world which is why they hate and persecute us (John 15:18-19). Christians are, or should be, influenced by different principles from those of the world. We are motivated by the love of God and holiness, while the world is driven by the love of sin. It is our very separation from the world that arouses the world’s animosity toward us. The world would prefer that we were like them; since we are not, they hate us (1 Peter 4:3-4).

 
As faithful Christians, we must learn to recognize the value of persecution and even to rejoice in it, not in an ostentatious way, but quietly and humbly because persecution has great spiritual value. First, persecution allows us to share in a unique fellowship with our Lord. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul outlined a number of things he surrendered for the cause of Christ. Such losses, however, he viewed as “rubbish” (Philippians 3:8), or “dung” (KJV), that he might share in the “fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). The noble apostle even counted his chains as a grace (favor) which God had bestowed upon him (Philippians 1:7).

Second, in all truth, persecution is good for us. James argues that trials test our faith, work or develop (endurance) in our lives, and help develop maturity (James 1:2-4). For as steel is tempered in the flames of the forge, trials and persecution serve to hone down those rough edges that tarnish our character. Yielding graciously to persecution allows one to demonstrate that he is of a superior quality than his adversaries. It’s easy to be hateful, but an ugly disposition throws a light upon our human weakness. It is much more Christ-like to remain calm and to respond in kindness in the face of evil opposition. Without question this is a tremendous challenge, but we have the power of the Holy Spirit within us and the wonderful example of the Lord to encourage us. Peter says of Jesus, “When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

Third, persecution enables us to value the support of true friends. Conflict sometimes brings faithful children of God together in an encouraging and supportive way they might not have known otherwise. Hardship can stimulate the Lord’s people toward a greater resolve to love and comfort one another and lift one another to the throne of grace in prayer. There’s nothing like an unpleasant incident to help the more mature rise toward a greater level of brotherly love.

 
So, when we think about it seriously, we can move ourselves forward, even in the face of antagonism, whether from the world or within the church, and press on. We can thank God for His grace and for His patience with us. We can express gratitude for those whom we love in the Lord and who stand with us in times of distress. And we can pray for those who would accuse, misuse, or abuse us (2 Corinthians 11:24; Romans 10:1).

Recommended Resource: Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe.

Online Article Source

 THE NOT SO SECRET RAPTURE

 Revised

By W. Fred Rice

  (ThM, Systematic Theology, Westminster Seminary

Evangelical book catalogs promote books such as Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, The Great Escape, and the Left Behind series. Bumper stickers warn us that the vehicle’s occupants may disappear at any moment. It is clear that there is a preoccupation with the idea of a secret rapture. Perhaps this has become more pronounced recently due to the expectation of a new millennium and the fears regarding potential Y2K problems. Perhaps psychologically people are especially receptive to the idea of an imminent, secret rapture at the present time. Additionally, many Christians are not aware that any other position relative to the second coming of Jesus Christ exists. Even in Reformed circles there are numerous people reading these books. Many of these people are unaware that this viewpoint conflicts with Scripture and Reformed Theology.

What exactly is the secret rapture teaching? It is the teaching that the Christian Church will be secretly removed from the world, and that the unbelievers who are left behind will not be certain where vast multitudes have gone. These unbelievers will be left on the earth to endure seven years of tribulation, which will be initiated by the Antichrist, who will be revealed only after the rapture has taken place. The prophecies of the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls of the book of Revelation will be fulfilled during this tribulation.

Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are the authors of Left Behind and four other books in a series that delineates this theory in popular fiction. So popular is this series that 4.5 million copies of the books and audio tapes have been sold. It has its own extensive web site, postcards, and a separate Left Behind Series for Kids, and a movie is being made based on the first two books, Left Behind and Tribulation Force. In Tim LaHaye’s book Left Behind, the first in this series, Rayford Steele, pilot for Pan-Continental Airlines is making a flight from Chicago to London when he is informed by Hattie, his head flight attendant, that many of their passengers have disappeared mid-flight. Their clothes are the only evidence remaining of their former presence. As Rayford contacts other airliners he finds that they have experienced the same phenomenon. Upon his forced return to Chicago he finds total chaos, as aircraft and vehicles, suddenly without operators, have collided and crashed all over the city. After reaching his home with considerable difficulty, he finds that his own wife and son have disappeared. Actually, this is what he had expected, since his wife was a Christian who had spoken regularly about the imminent secret rapture of the Church, and he finds this the only reasonable explanation for what has happened. The majority of people, however, seek to find some other reason, such as capture by aliens or an unexplained scientific phenomenon. Rayford calls the church where his wife was a member, and the visitation pastor Bruce Barnes answers the phone! Rayford meets with Bruce in an effort to get some answers, and Bruce confesses that he was never a true Christian, and was not surprised to be left behind. But Bruce has become a Christian since the rapture, and is anxious to share his faith with others. Rayford and many others are converted. Two witnesses, Moishe and Eli, appear out of nowhere and begin witnessing in the city of Jerusalem. We are informed that through their witness 144,000 Jews will be converted. Meanwhile, Nicolae Carpathia, a brilliant and eloquent Romanian, rises quickly to power, becoming the head of the United Nations. At the end of the book it is evident that he is either the Antichrist or the False Prophet, and that his professed humanitarianism is totalitarianism in disguise. We are left hanging on the edge of a literary cliff, and will have to read the succeeding books of the series to learn the final outcome. But those of us acquainted with dispensational theology have a fairly good idea of what will happen.

So what is wrong with the perspective of these novels and other books which promote this theory in a fictional or non-fictional fashion? After all, such books accurately represent the popular theory of the rapture as taught in the majority of evangelical, Bible believing churches in the United States today. But do they truly represent the teachings of Scripture? The majority of Reformed people have always answered this question in the negative.

What, then, does the Bible teach? At the time of Christ’s ascension, the disciples were told that “this same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). His ascension was visible and physical; his second coming will be visible and physical as well. Dispensationalists seek to explain this by saying that the second coming is divided into two parts, the coming of Christ for his saints (the secret rapture), and the coming of Christ with his saints (the revelation), and that it is only at his revelation that he will appear visibly. But this in reality postulates a second and a third coming.^[1]

Additionally, there is simply no hint of a secret rapture in Scripture. The coming of Christ is consistently described as a visible and noisy event, which is also accompanied by the resurrection of the dead. I Thessalonians 4:16 contains one of the most vivid descriptions of the second coming. We are told that “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” The same connection of the sound of the trumpet with the resurrection is also made in I Cor. 15:51-52.

Matthew 24:21-311^[2] teaches that the coming of Christ will be “as the lightning” (v. 27), that “all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet . . ..” (vv. 30-31). In addition to describing this event as noisy and clearly visible by all the inhabitants of the earth, this passage also warns us against belief in a secret coming of Christ: “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it” (v. 23); and, ” . . . if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it” (v. 26). There will be absolutely no question about what has happened after Christ has come. People left behind will not be dreaming up explanations – they will be mourning because their judgment has come.

Also going against this theory is II Thess. 2:1-10, which teaches that two events will occur prior to the coming of Christ: (1) “the falling away” (or “rebellion,” NIV, or, literally, “apostasy”); (2) the revelation of “the man of lawlessness.” Now whether we understand the Antichrist as nothing more than the spirit of Antichrist, or as a particular individual, one thing is clear: this revelation of the Antichrist will be prior to Christ’s coming, not afterwards.

Scripture teaches that the coming of Christ will be sudden and unexpected, especially to unbelievers. This is the teaching of Paul in I Thess. 5:1-10. But to say that it will be sudden and unexpected is not to say that it will be secret.

The passage that is most frequently used to substantiate a secret rapture and unbelievers being left behind is Luke 17:31-37, which speaks of “two in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left.” It is perfectly true that this passage teaches that unbelievers will be left behind. But there is nothing here to indicate the imaginative dispensational scenario of the one being taken away secretly. Comparing Scripture with Scripture we must conclude that those left behind are left behind to suffer judgment. II Thess. 1:3-10 speaks of the Lord Jesus “in flaming fire taking vengeance” when he is revealed from heaven. Unbelievers will not be left behind to go through a seven year tribulation and have a second chance to accept the Lord during that time. This idea of a second chance is emphasized again and again in Left Behind, and yet this is an idea which is foreign to Scripture.

Concerning the Left Behind books, can anything positive be said? First, they are well written and engaging. Second, the plan of salvation is, on the whole, accurately represented: it is clear that conversion is much more than a bare profession of faith, but is accompanied by repentance and followed by a changed life. Third, these books certainly impress upon people the reality of the return of Christ, even if the details regarding it are misrepresented. 

__________
^[1]Titus 2:13 is often used to support this. The argument is that “the blessed hope” is the rapture and the “glorious appearing” is the revelation. But the Greek grammatical construction for “the blessed hope and glorious appearing” (one article precedes two nouns which are joined by the conjunction kai) makes it as likely that the terms are being used to describe one event as two.

^[2]It seems to me that many preterists dilute the meaning of this passage almost as much as dispensationalists do, by referring it to an unseen coming of Christ in 70 A.D. John Murray, Collected Writings, Volume II, pp. 387ff., by contrast, supports the prevailing interpretation that this refers to the second coming of Christ. But at least preterists would agree that Scripture does not teach a secret rapture.  

[TO THE CHOIRMASTER. OF DAVID, THE SERVANT OF THE LORD.]

            Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes.

            For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.

            The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good.

            He plots trouble while on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil.

            Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

            Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD.

            How precious is your steadfast love, O God!

            The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

            They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

            For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.

            Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart!

            Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.

            There the evildoers lie fallen; they are thrust down, unable to rise.

(Psalm 36 ESV)

In order to understand absolute or universal truth, we must begin by defining truth. Truth, according to the dictionary, is “conformity to fact or actuality; a statement proven to be or accepted as true.” Some people would say that there is no true reality, only perceptions and opinions. Others would argue that there must be some absolute reality or truth.

One view says that there are no absolutes that define reality. Those who hold this view believe everything is relative to something else, and thus there can be no actual reality. Because of that, there are ultimately no moral absolutes, no authority for deciding if an action is positive or negative, right or wrong. This view leads to “situational ethics,” the belief that what is right or wrong is relative to the situation. There is no right or wrong; therefore, whatever feels or seems right at the time and in that situation is right. Of course, situational ethics leads to a subjective, “whatever feels good” mentality and lifestyle, which has a devastating effect on society and individuals. This is postmodernism, creating a society that regards all values, beliefs, lifestyles, and truth claims as equally valid.

The other view holds that there are indeed absolute realities and standards that define what is true and what is not. Therefore, actions can be determined to be either right or wrong by how they measure up to those absolute standards. If there are no absolutes, no reality, chaos ensues. Take the law of gravity, for instance. If it were not an absolute, we could not be certain we could stand or sit in one place until we decided to move. Or if two plus two did not always equal four, the effects on civilization would be disastrous. Laws of science and physics would be irrelevant, and commerce would be impossible. What a mess that would be! Thankfully, two plus two does equal four. There is absolute truth, and it can be found and understood.

To make the statement that there is no absolute truth is illogical. Yet, today, many people are embracing a cultural relativism that denies any type of absolute truth. A good question to ask people who say, “There is no absolute truth” is this: “Are you absolutely sure of that?” If they say “yes,” they have made an absolute statement—which itself implies the existence of absolutes. They are saying that the very fact there is no absolute truth is the one and only absolute truth.

Beside the problem of self-contradiction, there are several other logical problems one must overcome to believe that there are no absolute or universal truths. One is that all humans have limited knowledge and finite minds and, therefore, cannot logically make absolute negative statements. A person cannot logically say, “There is no God” (even though many do so), because, in order to make such a statement, he would need to have absolute knowledge of the entire universe from beginning to end. Since that is impossible, the most anyone can logically say is “With the limited knowledge I have, I do not believe there is a God.”

Another problem with the denial of absolute truth/universal truth is that it fails to live up to what we know to be true in our own consciences, our own experiences, and what we see in the real world. If there is no such thing as absolute truth, then there is nothing ultimately right or wrong about anything. What might be “right” for you does not mean it is “right” for me. While on the surface this type of relativism seems to be appealing, what it means is that everybody sets his own rules to live by and does what he thinks is right. Inevitably, one person’s sense of right will soon clash with another’s. What happens if it is “right” for me to ignore traffic lights, even when they are red? I put many lives at risk. Or I might think it is right to steal from you, and you might think it is not right. Clearly, our standards of right and wrong are in conflict. If there is no absolute truth, no standard of right and wrong that we are all accountable to, then we can never be sure of anything. People would be free to do whatever they want—murder, rape, steal, lie, cheat, etc., and no one could say those things would be wrong. There could be no government, no laws, and no justice, because one could not even say that the majority of the people have the right to make and enforce standards upon the minority. A world without absolutes would be the most horrible world imaginable.

From a spiritual standpoint, this type of relativism results in religious confusion, with no one true religion and no way of having a right relationship with God. All religions would therefore be false because they all make absolute claims regarding the afterlife. It is not uncommon today for people to believe that two diametrically opposed religions could both be equally “true,” even though both religions claim to have the only way to heaven or teach two totally opposite “truths.” People who do not believe in absolute truth ignore these claims and embrace a more tolerant universalism that teaches all religions are equal and all roads lead to heaven. People who embrace this worldview vehemently oppose evangelical Christians who believe the Bible when it says that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and that He is the ultimate manifestation of truth and the only way one can get to heaven (John 14:6).

Tolerance has become the one cardinal virtue of the postmodern society, the one absolute, and, therefore, intolerance is the only evil. Any dogmatic belief—especially a belief in absolute truth—is viewed as intolerance, the ultimate sin. Those who deny absolute truth will often say that it is all right to believe what you want, as long as you do not try to impose your beliefs on others. But this view itself is a belief about what is right and wrong, and those who hold this view most definitely do try to impose it on others. They set up a standard of behavior which they insist others follow, thereby violating the very thing they claim to uphold—another self-contradicting position. Those who hold such a belief simply do not want to be accountable for their actions. If there is absolute truth, then there are absolute standards of right and wrong, and we are accountable to those standards. This accountability is what people are really rejecting when they reject absolute truth.

The denial of absolute truth/universal truth and the cultural relativism that comes with it are the logical result of a society that has embraced the theory of evolution as the explanation for life. If naturalistic evolution is true, then life has no meaning, we have no purpose, and there cannot be any absolute right or wrong. Man is then free to live as he pleases and is accountable to no one for his actions. Yet no matter how much sinful men deny the existence of God and absolute truth, they still will someday stand before Him in judgment. The Bible declares that “…what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:19-22).

Is there any evidence for the existence of absolute truth? Yes. First, there is the human conscience, that certain “something” within us that tells us the world should be a certain way, that some things are right and some are wrong. Our conscience convinces us there is something wrong with suffering, starvation, rape, pain, and evil, and it makes us aware that love, generosity, compassion, and peace are positive things for which we should strive. This is universally true in all cultures in all times. The Bible describes the role of the human conscience in Romans 2:14-16: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.”

The second evidence for the existence of absolute truth is science. Science is simply the pursuit of knowledge, the study of what we know and the quest to know more. Therefore, all scientific study must by necessity be founded upon the belief that there are objective realities existing in the world and these realities can be discovered and proven. Without absolutes, what would there be to study? How could one know that the findings of science are real? In fact, the very laws of science are founded on the existence of absolute truth.

The third evidence for the existence of absolute truth/universal truth is religion. All the religions of the world attempt to give meaning and definition to life. They are born out of mankind’s desire for something more than simple existence. Through religion, humans seek God, hope for the future, forgiveness of sins, peace in the midst of struggle, and answers to our deepest questions. Religion is really evidence that mankind is more than just a highly evolved animal. It is evidence of a higher purpose and of the existence of a personal and purposeful Creator who implanted in man the desire to know Him. And if there is indeed a Creator, then He becomes the standard for absolute truth, and it is His authority that establishes that truth.
Fortunately, there is such a Creator, and He has revealed His truth to us through His Word, the Bible. Knowing absolute truth/universal truth is only possible through a personal relationship with the One who claims to be the Truth—Jesus Christ. Jesus claimed to be the only way, the only truth, the only life and the only path to God (John 14:6). The fact that absolute truth does exist points us to the truth that there is a sovereign God who created the heavens and the earth and who has revealed Himself to us in order that we might know Him personally through His Son Jesus Christ. That is the absolute truth.

Recommended Resource: True Truth: Defending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World by Art Lindsley.

Dr. Arthur Lindsley has been a Scholar-in-Residence at the C.S. Lewis Institute in Annandale, Virginia since 1987. He holds a B.A. degree from Seattle Pacific University, a M.Div. Degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.

He is co-author of Classical Apologetics with R.C. Sproul. Dr. Lindsley is on the staff of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Metropolitan Washington, D.C. where he teaches classes. He has also taught at the National Presbyterian Church. He teaches preparation classes for Young Life each year and speaks at conferences throughout the United States and the world.

by Michael S. Horton, Modern Reformation Magazine

Citing examples from TV, pop music, and best-selling books, an article in Entertainment Weekly noted that "pop culture is going gaga for spirituality." However,

[S]eekers of the day are apt to peel away the tough theological stuff and pluck out the most dulcet elements of faith, coming up with a soothing sampler of Judeo-Christian imagery, Eastern mediation, self-help lingo, a vaguely conservative craving for ‘virtue,’ and a loopy New Age pursuit of ‘peace.’ This happy free-for-all, appealing to Baptists and stargazers alike, comes off more like Forest Gump’s ubiquitous ‘boxa chocolates’ than like any real system of belief. You never know what you’re going to get. (1)

The "search for the sacred" has become a recurring cover story for national news magazines for some time now; but is a revival of "spirituality" and interest in the "sacred" really any more encouraging than the extravagant idolatry that Paul witnessed in Athens (Acts 17)?

Not only historians and sociologists but novelists are writing about the "Gnostic" character of the soup that we call spirituality in the United States today. In a recent article in Harper’s, Curtis White describes our situation pretty well. When we assert, "This is my belief," says White, we are invoking our right to have our own private conviction, no matter how ridiculous, not only tolerated politically but respected by others. "It says, ‘I’ve invested a lot of emotional energy in this belief, and in a way I’ve staked the credibility of my life on it. So if you ridicule it, you can expect a fight." In this kind of culture, "Yahweh and Baal-my God and yours-stroll arm-in-arm, as if to do so were the model of virtue itself."

What we require of belief is not that it make sense but that it be sincere….Clearly, this is not the spirituality of a centralized orthodoxy. It is a sort of workshop spiritu-ality that you can get with a cereal-box top and five dollars….There is an obvious problem with this form of spirituality: it takes place in isolation. Each of us sits at our computer terminal tapping out our convictions….Consequently, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that our truest belief is the credo of heresy itself. It is heresy without an orthodoxy. It is heresy as an orthodoxy. (2)

While European nihilism denied only God, "American nihilism is something different. Our nihilism is our capacity to believe in everything and anything all at once. It’s all good!" All that’s left is for belief to become "a culture-commodity."

We shop among competing options for our belief. Once reduced to the status of a commodity, our anything-goes, do-it-yourself spirituality cannot have very much to say about the more directly nihilistic conviction that we should all be free to do whatever we like as well, each of us pursuing our right to our isolated happiness. (3)

Like Nietzsche himself, who said that truth is made rather than discovered and was described by Karl Barth as "the man of azure isolation," Americans just want to be left alone to create their own private Idaho. While evangelicals talk a lot about truth, their witness, worship, and spirituality seem in many ways more like their Mormon, New Age, and liberal nemeses than anything like historical Christianity.

We would prefer to be left alone, warmed by our beliefs-that-make-no-sense, whether they are the quotidian platitudes of ordinary Americans, the magical thinking of evangelicals, the mystical thinking of New Age Gnostics, the teary-eyed patriotism of social conservatives, or the perfervid loyalty of the rich to their free-market Mammon. We are thus the congregation of the Church of the Infinitely Fractured, splendidly alone together. And apparently that’s how we like it. Our pluralism of belief says both to ourselves and to others, ‘Keep your distance.’ And yet isn’t this all strangely familiar? Aren’t these all the false gods that Isaiah and Jeremiah confronted, the cults of the ‘hot air gods’? The gods that couldn’t scare birds from a cucumber patch? Belief of every kind and cult, self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement of every degree, all flourish. And yet God is abandoned. (4)

As far back as the early eighteenth century, the French commentator Alexis de Tocqueville observed the distinctly American craving "to escape from imposed systems" and "to seek by themselves and in themselves for the only reason for things, looking to results without getting entangled in the means toward them." He concluded, "So each man is narrowly shut up in himself and from that basis makes the pretension to judge the world." Americans do not need books or any other external authorities in order to find the truth, "having found it in themselves." (5) American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) announced that "whatever hold the public worship held on us is gone or going," prophesying the day when Americans would recognize that they are "part and parcel of God," requiring no mediator or ecclesiastical means of grace. Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself" captured the unabashed narcissism of American romanticism that plagues our culture from talk shows to the church.

During this same period, the message and methods of American churches also felt the impact of this romantic narcissism. It can be recognized in a host of sermons and hymns from the period, such as C. Austin Miles’ hymn, "In the Garden":

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses.
And he walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

The focus of such piety is on a personal relationship with Jesus that is individualistic, inward, and immediate. One comes alone and experiences a joy that "none other has ever known." How can any external orthodoxy tell me I’m wrong? My personal relationship with Jesus is mine. I do not share it with the church. Creeds, confessions, pastors, and teachers-not even the Bible-can shake my confidence in the unique experiences that I have alone with Jesus.

A Perfect Storm

If moralism represents a drift toward the Pelagian (or at least semi-Pelagian) heresy, "enthusiasm" is an expression of the heresy known as Gnosticism. A second-century movement that seriously threatened the ancient churches, Gnosticism tried to blend Greek philosophy and Christianity. The result was an eclectic spirituality that regarded the material world as the prison-house of divine spirits and the creation of an evil god (YAHWEH). Their goal was to return to the spiritual, heavenly, and divine unity of which their inner self is a spark, away from the realm of earthly time, space, and bodies. With little interest in questions of history or doctrine, the Gnostics set off on a quest to ascend the ladder of mysticism. The institutional church, with its ordained ministry, creeds, preaching, sacraments, and discipline, was alienating-like the body, it was the prison-house of the individual soul.

Pelagianism and Gnosticism are different versions of what Gerhard Forde called the "glory story." Following Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, which was following Romans 10 and 1 Corinthians 1, the Reformation contrasted the theology of glory with the theology of the cross. As Forde explains,

The most common overarching story we tell about ourselves is what we will call the glory story. We came from glory and are bound for glory. Of course, in between we seem somehow to have gotten derailed-whether by design or accident we don’t quite know-but that is only a temporary inconvenience to be fixed by proper religious effort. What we need is to get back on ‘the glory road.’ The story is told in countless variations. Usually the subject of the story is ‘the soul’…what Paul Ricoeur has called ‘the myth of the exiled soul.’ (6)

In neither version does one need to be rescued. Assisted, directed, enlightened perhaps, but not rescued-at least not through a bloody cross.

Both versions of the "glory story" drive us deeper into ourselves, identifying God with the inner self, instead of calling us outside of ourselves. The "cross story" and the "glory story" represent not merely different emphases, but entirely different religions, as J. Gresham Machen pointed out in his controversial book, Christianity and Liberalism.

Pelagianism leads to Christless Christianity because we do not need a Savior, but a good example. Gnosticism’s route to Christless Christianity is by driving us deeper inside ourselves rather than outside to the incarnate God who rescued us from the guilt, tyranny, and penalty of our sins. Pelagianism and Gnosticism combine to keep us looking to ourselves and within ourselves. We’re a self-help people and we like our gods inside of us where we can manage them. Together, these heresies have created the perfect storm: the American Religion.

Gnosticism as the American Religion?

Contemporary descriptions in news periodicals and polling data consistently reveal that the ever-popular "search for the sacred" in American culture shares a lot of similarities with Gnosticism. Of course, in the most popular versions there may be no explicit awareness of this connection or any direct dependence on such sources.

There is an explicit revival of Gnosticism in our day, however, in both the academy and popular culture, from Harvard Divinity School seminars to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. The "Gnosticism" aisle in the average bookstore chain (next to religion and spirituality) is evidence of renewed interest in pagan spiritualities. Matthew Fox, repeating the warning of self-described Gnostic psychologist Carl Jung, expresses this sentiment well: "One way to kill the soul is to worship a God outside you." (7) Other writers in this issue focus on this revival of explicit, full-strength Gnosticism, so I will focus on the "Gnosticism Lite" that pervades the American spirituality today.

This watered-down Gnosticism does not require any explicit awareness of, much less attachment to, the esoteric myth of creation and redemption-by-enlightenment. The opposition, however, between inner divinity and enlightenment and redemption, an external God, the external Word, an external redemption in Christ, and an institutional church offers a striking parallel to America’s search for the sacred.

In the American Religion, as in ancient Gnosticism, there is almost no sense of God’s difference from us-in other words, his majesty, sovereignty, self-existence, and holiness. God is my buddy or my inmost experience, or the power-source for living my best life now. God is not strange (i.e., holy)-and is certainly not a judge. He does not evoke fear, awe, or a sense of terrifying and disorienting beauty. Furthermore, all the focus on making atonement through a bloody sacrifice seems crude and unspiritual to Gnostics when, after all, the point of salvation is to escape the physical realm. All of this is too "Jewish," according to Gnostics from Marcion to Schleiermacher to the "Re-Imagining Conference" of mainline Protestant leaders (especially radical feminists) who explicitly appealed to Gnosticism in their screeds against "men hanging on crosses with blood dripping and all that gory stuff." The god of Gnosticism is not the one before whom Isaiah said, "Woe to me, for I am undone!" or Peter said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." To borrow a nice phrase from William Placher, it represents "the domestication of transcendence." God is no longer a problem for us.

Instead of God’s free decision to make his home with us in the world that he created, for the Gnostic we are at home with God already, in the stillness of our inner self and away from all entanglements in space and time. As the second-century church father Irenaeus pointed out, Gnostics simply do not care about the unfolding plan of redemption in history because they do not care about history. Time and space are alien to the innermost divine self. To mystics and radical Anabaptists like Thomas Müntzer who made even the external Word of Scripture and preaching subservient to an alleged inner word of personal revelation, Luther and Calvin said that this was the essence of "enthusiasm" (literally, God-within-ism). As Luther put it, this is the attempt to ascend the ladder from matter and history to spirit and the eternal vision of "the naked God." Yet, apart from the incarnate Word, this dazzling god we encounter at the top of that ladder is really the devil, who "disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11:14).

This characteristically American approach to religion, in which the direct relationship of the soul to God generates an almost romantic encounter with the sacred, makes inner experience the measure of spiritual genuineness. We are more concerned that our spiritual leaders exude "vulnerability," "authenticity," and the familiar spontaneity that tells us that they too really do have a personal relationship with Jesus than that they faithfully interpret Scripture and are sent by Christ through the official ordination of his church. Everything perceived as external to the self-the church, the gospel, Word and sacrament, the world, and even God-must either be marginalized or, in more radical versions, rejected as that which would alienate the soul from its immediacy to the divine.

It is therefore not surprising that today the "search for the sacred" continues to generate a proliferation of sects. In fact, sociologist Robert Bellah has coined the term "Sheilaism" to describe American spirituality, based on one interview in which a woman named Sheila said that she just follows her own inner voice. "Your Own Personal Jesus," parodying the title of a Depeche Mode song, seems to be the informal but intense spirituality of many American Christians as well.

Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics (Oxford, 1987) and Harold Bloom’s The American Religion (Simon and Schuster, 1992) point out with great insight the connections between this popular spirituality and Gnosticism. It is especially worth pondering Harold Bloom’s learned ruminations here because, as he himself observes, Philip Lee laments the Gnosticism of American Religion while Bloom celebrates it. (8)

Hailed as America’s most distinguished literary critic, Bloom displays a sophisticated grasp of the varieties of ancient Gnosticism as well as its successive eruptions in the West to the present day. First of all, says Bloom, "freedom, in the context of the American Religion, means being alone with God or with Jesus, the American God or the American Christ." (9) This unwritten creed is as evident in the history of American evangelicalism as it is in Emerson.

As a religious critic, I remain startled by and obsessed with the revivalistic element in our religious experience. Revivalism, in America, tends to be the perpetual shock of the individual discovering yet again what she and he always have known, which is that God loves her and him on an absolutely personal and indeed intimate basis. (10)

Second, as extreme as it at first appears, Bloom suggests that whatever the stated doctrinal positions that evangelicalism shares with historic Christianity,

Mormons and Southern Baptists call themselves Christians, but like most Americans they are closer to ancient Gnostics than to early Christians….The American Religion is pervasive and overwhelming, however, it is masked, and even our secularists, indeed even our professed atheists, are more Gnostic than humanist in their ultimate presuppositions. We are a religiously made culture, furiously searching for the spirit, but each of us is subject and object of the one quest, which must be for the original self, a spark or breath in us that we are convinced goes back to before the Creation. (11)

"The Christ of the twentieth century" is no longer really even a distinct historical person, but "has become a personal experience for the American Christian, quite clearly for the Evangelicals." (12) In this scheme, history is no longer the sphere of Christianity. The focus of faith and practice is not so much Christ’s objective person and work for us, outside of us, as it is a "personal relationship" that is defined chiefly in terms of inner experience.

Although he may at times overstate his thesis, Bloom draws on numerous primary and secondary sources from the history of particular movements to build his case. In one chapter, Bloom explores the enthusiastic revivalism of Barton Stone, who broke away from Presbyterianism to found what he regarded as the finally and fully restored apostolic church: the Church of Christ (Disciples). According to his memoirs, Stone wrote, "Calvinism is among the heaviest clogs on Christianity in the world," even from the very beginning of its assumptions: "Its first link is total depravity." (13)

A full generation before Emerson came to his spiritual maturity, the frontier people experienced their giant epiphany of Gnosis at Cane Ridge. Their ecstasy was no more communal than the rapture at Woodstock; each barking Kentuckian or prancing yippie barked and pranced for himself alone…. American ecstasy is solitary, even when it requires the presence of others for the self’s glory. (14)

"What was missing in all this quite private luminosity," Bloom adds, "was simply most of historic Christianity."

I hasten to add that I am celebrating, not deploring, when I make that observation. So far as I can tell, the Southern Jesus, which is to say the American Jesus, is not so much an agent of redemption as he is an imparter of knowledge, which returns us to the analysis of an American Gnosis in my previous chapter. Jesus is not so much an event in history for the American Religionist as he is a knower of the secrets of God who in return can be known by the individual. Hidden in this process is a sense that depravity is only a lack of saving knowledge. (15)

This intuitive, direct, and immediate knowledge is set over against the historically mediated forms of knowledge. What an American knows in his or her heart is more certain than the law of gravity.

"A pragmatic exploiter of his own charisma," Charles Finney was a formative influence in the American Religion, notes Bloom. (16) So the "deeds, not creeds" orientation of American revivalism is driven not only by a preference for works over faith (i.e., Pelagianism), but by the Gnostic preference for a private, mystical, and inward "personal relationship with Jesus" in opposition to everything public, doctrinal, and external to the individual soul. Religion is formal, ordered, corporate, and visible; spirituality is informal, spontaneous, individual, and invisible.

As sweeping as it may first appear, there are clear similarities between fundamentalism and Pentecostalism on the one hand and Protestant liberalism on the other. In fact, one reason that these forms of religion have survived modernity, against all expectations to the contrary, is that they not only can accommodate modernity’s privatization of faith as an inner experience but they actually thrive in this atmosphere. Repeatedly in the past few centuries, we have seen how easily an inner-directed pietism and revivalism turns to the vinegar of liberalism. One example is Wilhelm Herrmann, a liberal pietist, whose statement early in the twentieth century could be heard in many evangelical circles then as now: "To fix doctrines…into a system is the last thing the Christian Church should undertake….But if, on the other hand, we keep our attention fixed on what God is producing in the Christian’s inner life, then the manifoldness of the thoughts which spring from faith will not confuse us, but give us cause for joy." (17)

So it is not surprising when today’s fundamentalists eventually become tomorrow’s liberals, in recurring cycles that pass through stages of intense controversy. Bloom follows a similar narrative in relation to Gnosticism. For all of their obvious differences, fundamentalists and liberals, Quakers and Roman Catholics, Presbyterians and Mormons, New Agers and Southern Baptists sound a lot alike when it comes to how we in America approach religious truth.

While Luther, Calvin, and their heirs sought to reform the church, the more radical Protestant movements have often seen the church as an obstacle to the individual’s personal relationship with God. (Evangelical George Barna, a guru of the church growth movement, has recently written three books arguing that the era of the local church is over, soon to be replaced by Internet resources for personal piety.) Where the Reformers pointed to the external ministry of the church, centering on Word and sacrament, as the place where God promised to meet his people, "enthusiasm" was suspicious of everything external. Similarly, Quakers gave up the formal ministry, including preaching and sacrament, in favor of group sharing of personal revelations. Even when evangelicals retain these public means appointed by Christ, they often become assim-ilated to self-expression and techniques for self-trans-formation: means of our experience and activity more than God’s means of grace. Ultimately, it’s what I do alone with God that matters, not what God does for me together with his covenant people through public, earthly, material means that he has appointed.

In the history of American (and to some extent British) evangelicalism, the fear of sacraments (as opposed to ordinances) has often been defended as a defense against the perpetual threat of Romanism. In all likelihood, however, a deeper (perhaps unwitting) source of such unease is that evangelicalism has listed toward Gnosticism: Nothing can be allowed to get in the way of my personal and utterly unique relationship with Jesus. Southern Baptist theologian E. Y. Mullins was not saying anything that was not already elaborated by American Transcen-dentalists when he wrote, "That which we know most indubitably are the facts of inner experience." (18) The individual believer, alone with his or her Bible, was all that was necessary for a vital Christian experience. Bloom quotes Mullins’ axiom, "Religion is a personal matter between the soul and God." (19) However heterodox this assumption may be by the standards of historic Christianity, it is surely the orthodoxy of American Religion.

Furthermore, Bloom observes, triumphalism-the inability to face the depravity of the inner self even at its best-marks the Gnostic spirit. "Triumphalism is the only mode," says Bloom, in which Mullins and American religionists generally "read Romans," moving quickly through the body of Paul’s epistle to chapter 8: "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." (20)

Indeed, Gnostics are allergic to any talk about the reality of sin and death. It was in nineteenth-century America that Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, whose explicitly Gnostic enthusiasms introduced into the vocabulary of Christians the euphemism "passing away" for death and resurrection.

For Bloom, two outstanding exceptions to this Gnostic trajectory are Swiss theologian Karl Barth and Princeton scholar (and founder of Westminster Seminary) J. Gresham Machen. "Barth knows the difference between the Reformed faith and Gnosis," says Bloom, pointing out the critical divergence: the subjective experience of the self over God’s objective word and work. (21)

What we call fundamentalists, says Bloom, are really Gnostics of an anti-intellectual variety. If there were a possibility of an anti-Gnostic version of fundamentalism, says Bloom, such proponents "would find their archetype in the formidable J. Gresham Machen, a remarkable Presbyterian New Testament scholar at Princeton, who published a vehement defense of traditional Christianity in 1923, with the aggressive title Christianity and Liberalism." Bloom adds, "I have just read my way through this, with distaste and discomfort but with reluctant and growing admiration for Machen’s mind. I have never seen a stronger case made for the argument that institutional Christianity must regard cultural liberalism as an enemy to faith." (22) In contrast to this defense of traditional Christianity, those who came to be called fundamentalists are more like "the Spanish Fascism of Franco…heirs of Franco’s crusade against the mind, and not the legatees of Machen." (23)

In short, "the Calvinist deity, first brought to America by the Puritans, has remarkably little in common with the versions of God now apprehended by what calls itself Protestantism in the United States." Again, as Bloom himself points out, Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics makes almost the same arguments, with many of the same historical examples. What makes Bloom’s account a little more interesting is that he champions the American Religion and hopes for even greater gains for Gnosticism in the future. According to Bloom, a "revival of Continental Reformed Protestantism is precisely what we do not need." (24) Like ancient Gnosticism, contemporary American approaches to spirituality-however different conservative and liberal versions may appear on the surface-typically underscore the inner spirit as the locus of a personal relationship. As conservative Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith expresses it, "We meet God in the realm of our spirit." (25) This view is so commonplace that it seems odd to hear it challenged. Nevertheless, the church fathers, Protestant Reformers, and orthodox theologians have always directed us with the Scriptures, outside of ourselves, where God has chosen to meet with and to reconcile strangers.

Philip Lee’s contrast between Gnosticism and Calvin can be just as accurately documented from a wide variety of Christians through the ages:

Whereas classical Calvinism had held that the Christian’s assurance of salvation was guaranteed only through Christ and his Church, with his means of grace, now assurance could be found only in the personal experience of having been born again. This was a radical shift, for Calvin had considered any attempt to put ‘conversion in the power of man himself’ to be gross popery. (26)

In fact, for the Reformers, adds Lee, the new birth was the opposite of "rebirth into a new and more acceptable self," but the death of the old self and its rebirth in Christ. (27)

Like ancient Gnosticism, American spirituality uses God or the divine as something akin to an energy source. Through various formulae, steps, procedures, or techniques, one may "access" this source on one’s own. Such spiritual technology could be employed without any need for the office of preaching, administering baptism or the Supper, or membership in a visible church, submitting to its communal admonitions, encouragements, teaching, and practices.

According to the studies of sociologist Wade Clark Roof, "The distinction between ‘spirit’ and ‘institution’ is of major importance" to spiritual seekers today. (28) "Spirit is the inner, experiential aspect of religion; institution is the outer, established form of religion." (29) He adds, "Direct experience is always more trustworthy, if for no other reason than because of its ‘inwardness’ and ‘withinness’-two qualities that have come to be much appreciated in a highly expressive, narcissistic culture." (30)

The way many evangelicals today speak of "accessing" and "connecting" with God underscores this point, in sharp contrast with the biblical emphasis on God’s descent to us in the incarnation. Profoundly aware of our difference from God not only as creatures but as sinners as well, biblical faith underscores the need for mediation. God finds us by using his own creation as his "mask" behind which he hides so that he can serve us. The Gnostic, by contrast, needs no mediation. God is not external to the self; in fact, the human spirit and the divine Spirit are already a unity. We cannot be judged-but, then, this also means that we cannot be justified.

To the extent that churches in America today feel compelled to accommodate their message and methods to these dominant forms of spirituality (dominant also in-perhaps even first in-American evangelicalism itself), they will lend evidence to the thesis that Christianity is not news based on historical events but just another therapeutic illusion.

The Flight of the Lonely Soul vs. the Journey of the Pilgrim

Longing for Christ’s return, the Christian is world-weary because "this age" lies under the power of sin and death. As the firstfruits of the new creation, Jesus Christ has conquered these powers. It is only a matter of time before the restoration of redeemed creation at the end of history. In the meantime, the believer groans along with the rest of creation for this liberation (Rom. 8:18-25). So the Christian is longing for the final liberation of creation, not from creation. Precisely because the believer is rooted in the age to come, of which the Spirit’s indwelling presence is the down payment, there is a simultaneous groaning in the face of the status quo and confidence in God’s promise to make all things new.

By contrast, the Gnostic self is rootless, restless, weary of the world not because of its bondage to sin but because it is worldly, longing not for its sharing in the liberation of the children of God but in its freedom at last from creation’s company; not the transformation of our times and places, but the transcendence of all times and places. "Taking no root," wrote nineteenth-century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, "I soon weary of any soil in which I may be temporarily deposited. The same impatience I feel, or conceive of, as regards this earthly life." (31) Add to this philosophical orientation the practical transience of contemporary life that keeps us blowing like tumbleweed across the desert, and Gnosticism can be easily seen to jive with our everyday experience. Uprooted, we rarely live anywhere long enough even to be transplanted. Flitting like a bumble bee from flower to flower of religious, spiritual, moral, psychic, and even familial and sexual identities, our generation actually finds it plausible that there can be genuine communities (including "churches") on the Internet.

But the "glory story" is not all it’s cracked up to be. Bearing the weight of self-salvation or self-deification on our shoulders is as foolish as it is cruel. The search for the sacred leads to hell rather than heaven, to death rather than life, to ourselves (or Satan) rather than to the God who has descended to us in Jesus Christ, veiling his blinding majesty in our frail flesh. In this foolishness God outsmarts us, and in this weakness he conquered the powers of death and hell. The truth that Jesus proclaims-and the truth that Jesus is-remains for all ages, even for Americans, "the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes" (Rom. 1:16).

1 Jeff Gordinier, Entertainment Weekly (7 October 1994).
2 Curtis White, "Hot Air Gods," Harper’s vol. 315/no. 1891 (December 2007), p. 13.
3 White, pp. 13-14.
4 White, p. 14.
5 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: 1898), vol. 1, p. 66.
6 Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 5.
7 Cited in Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 75.
8 Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), pp. 26-27.
9 Bloom, p. 15.
10 Bloom, p. 17.
11 Bloom, p. 22.
12 Bloom, p. 25.
13 Quoted by Bloom, p. 60.
14 Bloom, p. 264.
15 Bloom, p. 65.
16 Bloom, p. 73.
17 Wilhelm Herrmann, Communion with God (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), p. 16.
18 Cited by Bloom, p. 204, from E. Y. Mullins, The Christian Religion (1910), p. 73.
19 Cited by Bloom, p. 213, from E. Y. Mullins, The Axioms of Religion (1908), pp. 53-54.
20 Bloom, p. 213.
21 Bloom, p. 213.
22 Bloom, p. 228.
23 Bloom, p. 229.
24 Bloom, p. 259.
25 Chuck Smith, New Testament Study Guide (Costa Mesa: The Word for Today, 1982), p. 113.
26 Philip Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 144.
27 Lee, p. 255.
28 Roof, p. 23.
29 Roof, p. 30.
30 Roof, p. 67.
31 Cited in Vernon L. Parrington, "The Romantic Revolution in America," vol. 2 of Main Currents in American Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959), pp. 441-442.

Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California), host of the White Horse Inn, national radio broadcast, and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is author of many books, including The Gospel-Driven Life, Christless Christianity, People and Place, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, The Christian Faith, and For Calvinism.

Issue: "The New Spiritualities" May/June 2008 Vol. 17 No. 3 Page number(s): 14-20

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